RANT: Rage Against The (Video) Machine

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I’ve been a ‘YouTube Loyalist’ for a while. I think it’s a platform that has done amazing things to revolutionize the distribution of media, news, and entertainment in our modern world. YouTube laid lots of groundwork for allowing folks like myself to make a living by entertaining the masses while working from home. This is something for which I will be eternally grateful. That being said, the actual strength of conviction for my YouTube loyalty has been weakening over the course of the last year… and just keeps getting weaker. They periodically make a few steps forward with a policy update, or meager offerings of an addition to the now badly aging user interface for the website.

Meanwhile the whole time this is going on, they are shoveling what is apparently hundreds of millions of dollars that COULD be spent on revolutionizing their platform and infrastructure… into stupid stunts like YouTube Red and all of the ‘exclusive programming’ they are making for it. My current frustration with YouTube is their antiquated and badly abused copyright claims system. With each passing week it seems like the system gets buggier, and is exploited more and more by a corrupt system that just seems to want to perpetuate the issues.

Today I had an upload for an episode of Alien: Isolation get a copyright claim filed against it. Fine, maybe it was the usual ‘near miss’ claims that I see on a regular basis, right? No. Today someone tried to claim Amanda Ripley (main character of the game) fighting an android… as smooth jazz.

I’m just going to let that sink in for a moment.

Wrap your head around that one yet? Okay, good. This is the kind of stuff that I, as what I consider to be an upright and ‘law abiding’ member of YouTube gets to put up with on a near weekly basis… and it’s downright exhausting at times. I’m moments away from turning ads off on my content completely.. and just earning what I can from our sources of revenue. I’d rather deny ANYONE potential revenue from this crap (including YouTube) than actually try to keep fighting the broken system and scrape out what few cents I can from it.

Come on, YouTube. Twitch is stepping up with major partnerships, massive new feature roll outs and downright epic quality of life changes for the users of their entire ecosystem. When are we, the long-suffering YouTube loyalists finally going to get some pay-off for our faith?